Maybe when I'm famous this will be my autobiography.

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My un-funny dad

Just seriously lol. I don’t even know, sometimes I find my parents interesting and funny, but only funny when they do silly things, not funny in an intellectually humorous way. But majority of the time, they’re boring. I think tonight, it’s safe to say, I can clearly make this conclusion. I mean, I’ve thought it before when I’d have to sit at their dinner ‘parties’ and listen, nodding, eating, to their mundane conversations. I guess when I was younger I attributed this to being young, and having different interests or ideas of what interesting topics of conversation were. Not that I’d even distinguish talking over food as going through topics of conversation when I was little, or even now. But seriously, so boring, it’s funny.

So one of my family friends from Singapore came to Sydney to study last year, she’s fluent in English and everything and gets the culture, she’s not a fob. And this year she came to live with us, since our house has so many, well not that many, empty rooms. And yesterday her parents came to visit to look at apartments to buy, and so they’re staying with us as well.

Side note, I didn’t want to come out and see them since I don’t wear make up at home, and I thought having two essays to write that are already late was excuse enough. Turns out, it’s not, and it’s pretty awkward having to sit at dinner with them tonight when it’s like I’ve avoided seeing them in my own house. I feel so guilty, but then at the same time, after that dinner, glad I didn’t come out of my room. I mean, they were at dinner for like three hours last night and I can’t imagine what they were talking about. Actually I can, probably the same as tonight but about buying houses, because tonight was about bank loans.

So I’m just enjoying the food my mums made, so yummy. Except now that I’ve finished I feel sick and too full… And my dad’s talking away, really mundanely, and her two parents are just listening. So my parents and her parents go way back I think, not really sure to where, maybe my dad and her dad were uni friends… And he’s telling them, explaining to them, the entire process of how we came to buy this house, and what loans he took. Comparison: they bought an apartment within one day of coming to Sydney, my parents took around three.

Whilst he was telling them the boring process, I thought to myself, maybe it’s just what he’s talking about that’s boring, not the entire conversation. And I thought, how would I say what he’s saying? “You’ve got to look at two different banks when you take out a loan to get the best offer. I ended up with blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the end.” I could say what he was saying much more quickly, and more interestingly. Instead, my dad is dragging out the entire process trying to see if there’s some sort of reaction from his audience. He’s putting in heaps of dramatic pauses in between words, I don’t even know.

Then he makes a joke saying in a serious voice, “I did not do anything illegal. I would never do anything illegal because I don’t want to go to jail.” Then bursts out laughing. Literally no one laughed. I felt kind of bad. My mum was like, “that’s not funny, stop.” And then I laughed because it was just so funny that it wasn’t. But seriously, my dad thinks he’s so funny and laughs at his own jokes and no one else laughs. It’s tragic. Not even his age peers laugh. I guess humour doesn’t age with age, it’s generally the same. My mum’s like, “why are you laughing?” I half think she thought I was actually laughing at my dad’s joke… And then I left.